ABSTRACT
Perimortem trauma refers to any injury or wound to the body, occurring around the time of death, that may affect the bone and/or soft tissues (Roberts 1991: 226). In a forensic pathology examination the identification of any such lesions may indicate the cause and manner of death, suggest how the body was treated during the perimortem interval, and provide insight into its disposal (Wedel & Galloway 2014). Such lesions can also influence the decomposition of a body and so are factors in estimating the postmortem interval (for example, Smith 2014). Perimortem skeletal trauma may be identified as fractures or breaks in the continuity of a bone that may pierce, divide, crush, or penetrate the bone. Careful study of these changes may assist interpretations made by the forensic pathologist and/or anthropologist; it can serve to corroborate soft-tissue evidence that may be used in court and, at the same time, may highlight discrepancies in a case that may not be indicated by soft-tissue change alone (Galloway 1999).
